Why this Argentina town doesn’t like beauty contests

In banning beauty contests, the town council in the Argentinian town of Chivilcoy said they are sexist and encourage violence against women.

The town in the Buenos Aires region famous for beautiful women became the first in the country to impose such a ban.

The council said beauty contests encourage an obsession with physical beauty and illnesses like bulimia and anorexia, according to BBC News.

In Latin America, beauty pageants often serve as a springboard for a career in television or entertainment.

A number of Latin America’s television personalities have won major beauty competitions and gone on to celebrity status and lucrative careers.

The council said that from now on, Chivilcoy’s festivities and anniversaries would be celebrated by recognising the achievements of young people.

They said the contests will be replaced with carnival mask competitions and prizes for volunteering.

Mariano Anton of the National Institute against Discrimination and Xenophobia, an anti-discrimination watchdog, has called for the scrapping of beauty competitions in schools to prevent attacks on participants, according to media reports.

He said his organisation had seen a large number of cases of violence against young participants in various provinces because “they were too beautiful”.

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